Tue, 05 Apr 2005

Ian comments on being accosted by a window washer in the CBD, and therefore forces my hand in commenting on this part of my current reading book, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. In the section in cleaning up crime in New York during the early 1990's, I was interested to note that one of the big things they did to clean up crime in the city was have the police stop people from standing on street corners insisting on washing people's wind screens.

This was basically part of the broken windows philosophy of crime control. People apparently behave in a different way on a dirty street with lots of broken windows than they do in a nicer part of town. So, how do you stop crime? Fix the broken windows. (Hey, it worked in New York.)

Ian, worse than losing $2, you were the victim of the leading edge of a rising tidal wave of crime. Soon wild gangs will be roaming the streets.